But how should we Christians respond to the question of death? We respond with faith in God, with a gaze of firm hope founded on the death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. So, death opens to life, to eternal life, which is not an infinite duplicate of the present time, but something completely new. Faith tells us that the true immortality for which we hope is not an idea, a concept, but a relationship of full communion with the living God: it is resting in his hands, in his love, and becoming in him one with all the brothers and sisters that he has created and redeemed, with all Creation. Our hope, then, lies in the love of God that shines resplendent from the Cross of Christ who lets Jesus’ words to the good thief: “Today you will be with me in Paradise” (Lk 23:43) resound in our heart. This is life in its fullness: life in God; a life of which we now have only a glimpse as one sees blue sky through fog.

- Homily, 3 November 2012

Death, followed by the Last Judgement, is an obligatory stage to pass through in order to reach this definitive reality.

- Angelus Address, 13 November 2011

Recalling the realities of Heaven is an invitation to recognize the relativity of what is destined to pass away, in the face of those values that do not know the deterioration of time. It is about working, committing oneself, allowing oneself the proper rest, but with the serene detachment of one who knows that he is only a traveller on the way to the heavenly Homeland; a pilgrim, in a certain sense, a foreigner on the path to Eternity.

- Homily

4 November 2010

With this term "Heaven" we wish to say that God, the God who made himself close to us, does not abandon us in or after death but keeps a place for us and gives us eternity. We mean that in God there is room for us.

To understand this reality a little better let us look at our own lives. We all experience that when people die they continue to exist, in a certain way, in the memory and heart of those who knew and loved them.

We might say that a part of the person lives on in them but it resembles a "shadow" because this survival in the heart of their loved ones is destined to end.

God, on the contrary, never passes away and we all exist by virtue of his love. We exist because he loves us, because he conceived of us and called us to life. We exist in God's thoughts and in God's love. We exist in the whole of our reality, not only in our "shadow".

Our serenity, our hope and our peace are based precisely on this: in God, in his thoughts and in his love, it is not merely a "shadow" of ourselves that survives but rather we are preserved and ushered into eternity with the whole of our being in him, in his creator love.

It is his Love that triumphs over death and gives us eternity and it is this love that we call "Heaven": God is so great that he also makes room for us. And Jesus the man, who at the same time is God, is the guarantee for us that the being-man and the being-God can exist and live, the one within the other, for eternity.

- Homily, 15 August 2010

Our path as individuals will one day lead us into the valley of the shadow of death, where no one can accompany us. Yet he will be there. Christ himself descended into the dark night of death. Even there he will not abandon us. Even there he will lead us.

- Homily, 11 June 2010

In the face of death every reason for human pride vanishes and instead what seriously matters comes to the fore. Everything comes to an end, every one of us is passing through this world. Only God has life in himself; he is life. Ours is a life of participation, given ab alio, thus a man can gain eternal life only because of the particular relationship that the Creator himself has established with him.

- Homily, 3 November 2008

The premature death of a person dear to us becomes an invitation not to persist in living in a mediocre way, but to strain towards the fullness of life as soon as possible.

- Homily, 3 November 2008

Paul has no fear of death; indeed, on the contrary, death indicates being totally with Christ. Yet Paul also shares in the sentiments of Christ who did not live for himself but for us.

- General Audience, 12 November 2008

No believer should die in loneliness and neglect.

- Address to the Pontifical Academy for Life, 25 February 2008

When, at the moment of death, the relationship with God is fully realized in the encounter with "him who does not die, who is Life itself and Love itself, then we are in life; then we "live'" (Spe Salvi, n. 27).

- Address to the Pontifical Academy for Life, 25 February 2008

The earthly experience concludes with death, but through death full and definitive life beyond time unfolds for each one of us.

- Address to the Pontifical Academy for Life, 25 February 2008

[B]odily death is a sleep from which God can awaken us at any moment.

- Angelus Address, 9 March 2008

[N]ot even death can make the believer's hope fruitless, because for our sake Christ entered the sanctuary of Heaven, and it is there that he desires to lead us, after having prepared a place for us (cf. Jn 14: 1-3).

- Homily, 5 November 2007

It is consoling and salutary, in praying for the deceased, to meditate upon Jesus' trust in his Father and thus to let oneself be enveloped by the serene light of this absolute abandonment of the Son to the will of his "Abba".

- Homily, 5 November 2007

At the end of life, death deprives us of all that is earthly, but not of that Grace and that sacramental "character" by virtue of which we are indissolubly associated with Our Lord and Savior's Paschal Mystery. Emptied of all but clothed in Christ: thus do we cross the threshold of death and are presented to the just and merciful God.

- Homily, 4 November 2006

Those who believe are never alone - neither in life nor in death.

- Inaugural Homily, 24 April 2005

In their hearts, people always and everywhere have somehow expected a change, a transformation of the world. Here now is the central act of transformation that alone can truly renew the world: violence is transformed into love, and death into life. Since this act transmutes death into love, death as such is already conquered from within, the resurrection is already present in it. Death is, so to speak, mortally wounded, so that it can no longer have the last world.

-Eucharistic Celebration, 21 August 2005

At the end of life, death deprives us of all that is earthly, but not of that Grace and sacramental "character" by virtue of which we are indissolubly associated with Our Lord and Savior's Paschal Mystery. Emptied of all but clothed in Christ: thus do the baptized cross the threshold of death and are presented to the just and merciful God.

- Homily, 4 November 2006